December 2008
52 posts
California Sues Bush Administration To Save... →
(via cathyerway)
This is fun.
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“People at a football game are not there to read the Encyclopedia Britannica....”
– Dave Newport, director of the Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, on one of the lessons he learned when he headed up the effort to make the Buffaloes’ home stadium (virtually) “zero waste.”
“We took all the trash cans out of the stadium,” he...
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An Aggressively Passive Approach to...
I was born in Darmstadt, Germany, so it was especially exciting to read about a revolution in home-building taking place in the city. The homes rely on “passive” heating, a creative and resourceful approach to the energy crisis. The NYT reports:
The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle....
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Gender Equality Would Increase African Food... →
A recent Reuters piece examines the critical role African women play in agriculture, and how increasing gender equality in terms of land rights and micro-financing loans would increase Africa’s food production and family income.
Hat tip to Jake Brewer.
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How to recylcle, compost, repurpose, and otherwise... →
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Inhabitat: TOP TEN MOST POPULAR GREEN DESIGN... →
Click through for some ooh- and ahh-worthy photos.
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Oil Not the Climate Change Culprit — It's All... →
If the world replaced all of its oil usage with carbon-neutral energy sources, ecologist Kenneth Caldeira of Stanford University calculated that it would only buy us about 10 years before coal emissions warmed the planet to what many scientists consider dangerous levels. (Via givemesomethingtoread.)
I’ve been working on a teen novel starring a tenacious 15-year-old who solves a...
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Amy Goodman’s New Column: “One Man’s Bid to Aid... →
Tim DeChristopher is an economics student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He had just finished his last final exam before winter break. One of the exam questions was: If the oil and gas companies are the only ones who bid on public lands, are the true costs of oil and gas exploitation reflected in the prices paid?
DeChristopher was inspired. He finished the exam, threw on his red...
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A green, black, and gold job
Precise Continental, a 26-year-old printing company in Brooklyn, is working over time to produce one million gold-and-black engraved invitations for President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration (NYT).
According to [owner Jim] Donnelly, Precise Continental was selected over rival printers because it is a union company, it uses recycled paper and it is certified by the Forest Stewardship...
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When is a million idling computers good for the...
Leo Hickman of The Guardian poses this question. IBM’s World Community Grid, a network of more than 400,000 computer users who own more than a million computers, has volunteered to pool their collective computer power to help a Harvard’ chemistry team discover an organic material that may pave the way for a less expensive and more efficient solar cell. In this case, most would agree...
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Trends for use of the word "green" in the... →
Via Jake Brewer.
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Team Green: Obama Cabinet’s energy and climate... →
Ben Jervey for GOOD Magazine:
The President-elect sent two clear signals Monday when he announced his energy and environment team. The first is that science is back in Washington, stepping forth from its banishment to the Dark Ages by the Bush administration. The second is something I’ve been hinting at for awhile: that environmental policy is energy policy is economic policy.
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The Green Jobs Tsarina
Remember when, shortly after the election, I announced I wanted a job in the Department of Labor in the new Green Jobs division I felt certain would be coming? I’ve since realized I’ve got a polar bear’s chance in the Arctic at getting a government job — which is fine, I’m happy doing what I do (and being funded by said government) — BUT ANYWAY, I am very...
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A sliver of hope
Wired reports that “a new calculation of the world’s coal reserves is much lower than previous estimates. If validated, the new info could have a massive impact on the fate of the planet’s climate.”
According this calculation, the world has 662 billion tons of coal total, including all that we’ve already mined. Previously, the best estimate was that we still had 850...
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Has the Arctic melt passed the point of no return? →
Climate-change researchers have found that air temperatures in the region are higher than would be normally expected during the autumn because the increased melting of the summer Arctic sea ice is accumulating heat in the ocean. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, was not expected to be seen for at least another 10 or 15 years and the findings will further raise ...
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“Nine out of every ten disasters are now climate-related. Recorded disasters have...”
– Sir John Holmes, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency-relief co-ordinator // The Economist
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“The most important year for climate change since 2001, when the Kyoto protocol...”
– Emma Duncan, from The Economist’s predictions for 2009.
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Anything's better than a "culture of substance...
Yesterday, President-elect Obama nominated another member to his team of centrists (the only “rival” that I can see is Senator Clinton, who is also nothing if not a centrist). If he’s approved by Congress, Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado will be the head of the Department of the Interior.
The department “manages and conserves most federally owned land, and administers...
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“Energy efficiency cannot be seen as Job 1 and the other stuff Job 2. You’ve got...”
– Dr. Nathan Lewis, who leads a team at Caltech pursuing ways to greatly improve solar energy technologies.
The NYT reports
[Dr. Lewis said] the appointment of Dr. Chu as energy secretary sent a strong signal that Mr. Obama understood that any program on climate-friendly energy had to have three...
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Further proof that Sheikh Mohammed, Crown Prince...
From the Daily Mail:
The world’s first refrigerated beach is to be built at a luxury hotel in Dubai so the filthy rich holidaymakers don’t burn their feet on the scalding hot sand.
The revolutionary beach will sit next to the new Palazzo Versace hotel and will include a system of heat-absorbing pipes built under the sand and giant wind blowers, designed to keep tourists cool in the...
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Santa would want you to unplug those Christmas... →
I was in DC this weekend, where I learned a little about White House Christmas traditions. During World War II, President Roosevelt ordered that the holiday lights remain off out of respect for national electricity rationing. How cool would it be if Bush did something like that this year as a symbol of solidarity and sacrifice in the face of the greatest battle of our age?
In her second piece...
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“Clean coal is like a healthy cigarette.”
– Blan Holman, attorney, Southern Environmental Law Center in Charleson S.C.
As quoted on This Is Reality, a much-hyped, well-funded, and, hopefully, effective new campaign to expose the truth: the emperor has no clothes. Clean coal technology does not exist. (If you watch TV, you’ve probably seen...
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3Qs with Dan Handeen of the University of...
The building industry has a nasty impact on the planet. One of the most common building materials, concrete, is alone responsible for 5 to 10 per cent of global CO2 emissions (!!). Dan Handeen is working to change this. A Research Fellow at the Center of Sustainable Building Research in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, Dan holds a Master of Architecture degree from the...
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“You want my tax dollars? Then I want to see the precise production plans and...”
– Thomas Friedman to the Big Three
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Excuse me while I geek out for a sec
Solar panels are sexy (and, in some states, well-subsidized), but it’s energy-efficiency that’s going to make the biggest impact on the carbon footprint of our homes, businesses, schools, hospitals, and other buildings. An excellent article in the Christian Science Monitor, “Green Homes: Solar vs. Energy Efficiency,” explains why.
Matt Golden, president of Sustainable...
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“What we have to do long term is make sure we have an energy strategy…....”
– President-elect Obama on Meet the Press
Music to my (Building Performance Lab) ears!
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Microfinance as the match to the flame
Andy Posner, a 24-year-old Environmental Studies masters student at Brown University, has started the Capital Good Fund, a program in Providence to provide small loans to low-income and minority people and women who want to start green businesses.
He writes that he was inspired by a green job training program in Providence where 25% of the graduates said they want to become entrepreneurs. ...
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“Why is it that everything that is good for our bodies, communities, and the...”
– Julia Butterfly Hill, an environmental activist best known for living in a California redwood tree for more than two years // via poortaste, peterwknox & grapefruite
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“For the past thirty years, the Big Three have been promising one hyper-efficient...”
– Elizabeth Kolbert, “Car Talk”
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“Workforce development should be a top priority of the federal government under...”
– Jay Bhalla, President of Willdan Energy Solutions (aka Intergy Corporation), speaking at a forum on energy efficiency sponsored by Columbia University’s Earth Institute today.
Bhalla was the lone Californian in a panel of New Yorkers. There were a lot of jokes about how advanced his state is...